20th Century Fox has closed a big deal for screen rights to the S. Craig Zahler novel Wraiths Of The Broken Land, so that it could reunite the team behind the Best Picture nominated The Martian. Ridley Scott has made a deal to direct with Drew Goddard to write the script. The film will be produced by Scott Free’s Michael Schaefer, Genre Films’ Simon Kinberg and Aditya Sood. The similarities to the comparatively upbeat The Martian end there. Wraiths of the Broken Land is a Western, the attempt to reclaim two kidnapped sisters forced into prostitution. It is a desperate rescue and plunges the protagonists into dark places in a book that combines horror, noir and Asian ultra violence. Scott was eager to work again with Goddard. The Martian grossed just north of $500 million worldwide.

Steve Asbell is overseeing for Fox. The book is the author’s followup to his Western novel A Congregation of Jackals. WME reps Scott and UTA reps Goddard.

Ridley Scott, Drew Goddard and Simon Kinberg, the team behind last year's hit sci-fi drama The Martian, are reuniting for a revenge-fueled Western.

Twentieth Century Fox has picked up the right to Wraiths of the Broken Land, a book by S. Craig Zahler, with Scott attached to direct, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Goddard will write the script while Kinberg will produce.

The 2013 book was set in 1900 in Mexico, with two sisters kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Her two brothers and father set out to find her, bringing along their outlaw gang that includes a former slave, a bird brain-eating Indian girl, and a brutal gunman.

It has been described as having elements of horror, pulp and Asian ultra-violence.